Archive for June, 2016

This is a raw, unedited note on Father’s Day. I’ve never known when it is, Father’s Day. It is that phantom of my life, the day when girls, and boys, craft cards, make something special for that special man in their lives. I dreaded that day, all of my childhood, day after day. I created so many fictions, so many tales explaining, justifying, why the man who made my life possible wasn’t there, how he had never been there. I have a black out of all the Father Days in history, a void that swallowed the pain, sadness and embarrassment of having no Daddy to write cards to in school.
I thought I was over it, the absence, and in some ways I am, but in others I am not, and I am a soon 39-year old woman who wakes up in London, where she lives and has a seemingly successful life, and I ask myself, Who the fuck do I congratulate on this day? Because long gone are the school days, of cards and commands, but then there is Facebook, and the bloated virtual happiness we all live in, and I wonder, who the hell am I going to congratulate on this daddy’s day? I browse, jealous of all those people who had a father I did not. I envy their childhoods, and their growing ups, and I feel empty, lost most of this day, and I come home late, after having hosted an event, one of those events of this school I have built, which is my home, my anchor, and while there I forget all about it, Father’s Day, cause I’m happy, I’m contained. And then I get on a taxi, come home, midnight around the corner, and the loneliness creeps in, and the void feels present again.

What can I do? I have no daddy, have never had, to send cards or Facebook postings to.

I have been lucky, though, to have found a bunch of incredible people in my life who have made me feel worthy, and loved, who have been my family in this journey of continents my life has become.

One can’t have it all.

I wasn’t given what nature is supposed to provide, but I was given more.